As usual, here is a wrap up about classes in P5

Managing Entrepreneurial Growth
My first impression was very positive as the professor was energetic, funny, with a lot of experience and seems to be truly interesting in making the whole experience a very unique one. If I look back at the course, I am not sure that I have learned so much. What he taught in this class had been previously taught in our OB classes, in our REP classes, in our Strategy classes or marketing classes. I found so many repetitions that I wish I had used my time for another course, that would have brought more new material.

I had a discussion with somebody about professors with a PhD or not. INSEAD has a couple of resident professors with no PhD – then it is a bet. Some are very good at teaching (I had a couple of examples in P4), very structured course, they bring a lot of professional experience and you leave the course thinking “wow, that was so great”. Typically, their subject will be very applied, very practical. Some are not very good at teaching, even though they probably are very good at their subject. They also lack the depth of thinking and theoretical explanation that a PhD holder would be able to bring.
The PhD holder on the other hand lacks contact with reality. One strategy prof was indicating that it was in Microsoft interest to play Intel against AMD. So why do they continuously provide Intel with advanced specifications and make sure that they program get tested on Intel’s platform, etc…and make Intel a preferred partner, etc…He could not answer. He replied: “theoretically, they would have an interest…”

Industry Competitive Analysis
The class in P5 was not taught by Karel Cool (who is one of the BEST BEST BEST professor at INSEAD) and I could feel it. I first thought that it would be great but the class lost momentum, the explanations tended to be too theoretical and modelized for my taste, I lost track of the key learning point and I didn’t learn as much about the best competitive strategies as I would have liked. I audited the course but I did the group projets (and that was a lot of fun). In all fairness, the professor was good and drew on class experience whenever possible.

Global Strategy Management
This is one of my best courses at INSEAD. The professor was truly excellent and can explain the world with a 2x2 matrix. You ask him where you should work and I am sure that he places you in a quadrant depending on your level of internal and external ties with his subject. He mastered teaching. He started off with a class case discussion, cold calling on people – skillfully taking the discussion where he wanted it to go, allowing to take various twists and turns to get the ideas out, then summarize the whole thing (with the matrix). Each class, he would summarize the key learning point of the previous class.
His intro class and his conclusion class were the most inspirational lectures I had at INSEAD. I will take the time to share what I remember from my last class.
He demonstrated superior knowledge, a rare openness of mind, a genuine curiosity for who we were, and a fantastic grasp of the key elements in the world. He positioned business on many different dimensioned, socially, economically, financially, etc…in a crystal clear way. I hope I can stay in touch with him. He is someone I would love to invite as a guest speaker if I need to get everyone to cry and feel inspired. He was a leader to me.

Financial Statement Analysis
Before I give my opinion, I must say that I believe that everyone thinking about graduating with an MBA should take this course. The professor started very slowly, then increased his pace. I liked it but I bet that anyone with strong financial background were bored to death after lecture 2. This is a general problem in such a program. I loved by Strategies for Asia Pac class but anyone born and bred in Asia would have found the class dull. In general, I thought that the professor was very clear, very good. I recommend he does not use Excel if he intends to have more than one participant use his financial model though. We lost many hours figuring out bugs in Excel rather than problems with our valuation assumptions.